MAL Ep. 20
In this session, the PCs realized they might all be in a little deeper than they thought... 1) They fought the skeletons in the Tenarri tomb, which was going pretty well until a bunch of damn fairies portaled in and started cursing everyone and supercharging the skeletons. The party rallied, killed the skeletons and a barghest and drove the fairies off after a long fight, with some assistance from Father Saxon, Captain Ames, and some sharpshooting guards. 2) Ames told the party he was at the tomb because his investigations of the three kidnappers the party saw in the vision turned up the tip that the purple-robed priest of Sesharet had been spotted at the tomb. Jon alertly said that was why the party was there too, which Ames believed. Ames and Jon both identified the most recent sighting of the priest they knew of to be a day and a half ago, and Ames posted guards on the city gates and the docks to detain the priest if they saw him trying to leave town. Saxon, who doesn't seem to like drow, expressed concern about Aler, but Zadkiel vouched for his character and Aler revealed himself as a member of Iscariot. 3) Saxon and the guards left, with Ames commenting to Jon that "dead men don't file no police reports," which Khirg took as permission to loot the tomb. Jon objected on the grounds that looting tombs is in fact a crime in Peraine, but was voted down by the other PCs, and the party cooperated to steal the golden chains from the urns (which they later used to pay for Remove Curse spells at the Church of Tallian.) Meanwhile, Angara found no scent of Seven in the burial chamber, and Aler and Bay opened the scarab beetle-shaped sarcophagus to find its seal broken and its occupant gone. Aler sensed lingering necromantic energy, and Tanya used a warlock invocation to translate the Tenarri script around the sarcophagus marking it as the final resting place of Enarras Misterian the sorcerer-king. 4) Their magics nearly depleted (including all their higher-level healing,) the party decided to return to the inn to sleep, but first stopped to talk to several NPCs. First, they returned to Terreira to see what she had learned about today's extraplanar portals (the party had specifically asked about whoever had captured Aler in the Clown Gang raid.) Terreira identified two portals in that place and time, one from the fey lands and another to the ethereal plane. Tisha reported that if someone had portaled in from the fey lands and out again to the ethereal plane on the same combat round, that person must be a high-level planeblazer. There was also a portal from the fey lands by the Tenarri tomb at an undetermined time (that may or may not have been one of the ones you witnessed there,) and two additional portals to the Ethereal plane and back from the Land of the Dead that Tisha identified as her own. 5) Jon stopped in to see Kalima and ask her about buildings north of the river. Kalima identified a cathedral of Raija and a large farmer's market as the most important community buildings there, but also mentioned a large metal warehouse the Clockwork Men had built there recently. She said she didn't know if they were men or machines, but that their leader was called the King of Clocks and they came originally from Averdale. Kalima said she would try to find out more information about the priest of Sesharet, the succubus, and the man in woad, and Jon asked to meet her at the Hall of Lyra at 8AM the next morning for breakfast. 6) The party went to visit Messana, who baked cookies for everyone. She was unable to cast any more Vision spells on their behalf (the spell does drain the witches' XP), but suggested to Red that the kidnappers seen in the previous vision might be easier to find than their captive. Red became excited by this and tried to use scry on the purple-robed priest, unfortunately to find he was in a blocked location. 7) Red, Adriel and Khirg went on to visit the oracular trolls, making an appointment with them for another augury the following night, and then to speak with the elven delegation they had seen at the Church of Tallian that morning. This time Red introduced herself as an archdruid and an elf-friend, and the elves decided to tell her everything after all, revealing that they were in Peraine trying to offer their assistance with the upcoming Invasion and had found trouble getting the authorities here to pay attention to them (being busy with the bombing of their City Hall, the tax scandal, the looming execution of Petros, and other issues.) They did not know Chavalk's name, saying that the one they had encountered leading these demons was rather ancient and named "Lasanta," but mentioned that extraplanars often went by more than one name over the course of a history as long as elven history, so these could be two different names for the same demon (or the name of two different allies.) They asked whether the Duke, the King, or the High Priest of Tallian knew about the League of Snakes, to which the PCs said they did not know. Red told the elves about the Green Guard, the Elemental Druids, and Iscariot as possible allies to fight against the League of Snakes. The elves exchanged animal messenger contact info with her and departed for Asture immediately in an attempt to pull strings and meet with the Duke directly. 8) Aler, meanwhile, encountered a spider named Sephy, bearing a note from Vanessa informing him that the leader of Iscariot, a yuan-ti named Naluah, had come by the apothecary looking for him. Aler checked Sephy for traps, listening devices, and obvious enchantments, and found none. The spider is sticking with Aler and his menagerie for now. 9) The party went to sleep and had disturbing dreams related to their own deaths, Chavalk's invasion, or both, all ending with the word UNLESS. Jarth, Cartino, and Bay also had such dreams, although Bay commented she usually has dreams about dying so it didn't really seem out of the ordinary for her. The party compared notes and realized that all the rest of them heard the word "UNLESS" in Zadkiel's voice, while Zadkiel heard it in Not-Star's voice. They speculated that the dreams might have been prophecies of doom or warnings of specific dangers that must be averted to survive. Several PCs seemed rather shaken up by their visions. 10) Red used another scry spell on the man in woad, being rebuffed by his will save and recognizing that he was located on another plane at this time. She does not know whether he was aware of this attempt. 11) Jon posed the question to the party of whether it was still the right thing to do to rescue Seven when the fate of the world might be at stake, and the group debated this for some time. 12) In the end, the group decided to investigate the Clockworkers' warehouse, which might be related to Seven's kidnapping (being north of the river and also apparently made of metal, both of which would have interfered with scrying) and also related to the quest to thwart the Invasion (since a Clockwork Man had been linked with one of Chavalk's curses by Terreira and Khirg reported fighting with strange mechanicals in his dream.) That is where they are headed at 5:30 AM on Sunday May 1st when the next session begins. Game on!